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Hoi,
The purpose of Wikipedia and its sister projects is to make material
available and have it used as widely as possible. The fact that we have two
licenses is a reasonable compromise because it allows everyone who remained
on the GFDL to continue to use our material. The purpose of the change has
been to allow the use of our material that is predominantly using only the
Creative Commons license.
The fact that all of our material can not be made available under the
CC-by-sa license because of some people insisting on using the wrong
license is beyond me. The fact that we insist that the two licenses are
compatible does not make them compatible. The fact that it is unlikely that
WE get into problems, does not justify the continued practice of accepting
GFDL only material when our reusers might.
Thanks,
GerardM

2009/8/4 Nemo_bis <nemowiki@gmail.com>

> Petr Kadlec, 04/08/2009 10:34:
> > I have said this to you before: GFDL has never been incompatible with
> > CC in the context of embedding images in encyclopedic text.
>
> Still, it's quite awful to have to comply to two licenses to reproduce
> one article (CC-BY-SA for text + GFDL for images): then, you'll have to
> use GFDL only (if it's possibile with that article) or more likely to
> get rid of those images (yes, on a DVD you could add GFDL text and so on
> to use those images too, but that's not so good neither).
>
> Nemo
>
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Marco Chiesa wrote:
> Commons accepts materials that are free according to
> http://freedomdefined.org/Definition GFDL works fall within that
> definition, so they're free. We have lived eight years with GFDL and
> we've called Wikipedia the free encyclopedia all the time, so we
> cannot just dismiss GFDL now only because we've found a license that
> works better for us. The interincompatibility is probably the worst
> feature of copyleft, but we've lived long time with that and there's
> no reason to stop doing it.
>
In terms of our policy, I agree with this. That being said, for anyone
deciding what license to choose when contributing to Wikimedia Commons -
I cannot fathom why you would limit media to being released only under
the GFDL unless it was designed specifically for incorporation into a
GFDL work. It's a documentation license, not a media license, and when
applied to radically different contexts it will still be free in the
dogmatic sense, but it may no longer be all that useful.

--Michael Snow

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On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Michael Snow<wikipedia@verizon.net> wrote:
[snip]
> I cannot fathom why you would limit media to being released only under
> the GFDL unless it was designed specifically for incorporation into a
> GFDL work. It's a documentation license, not a media license, and when
> applied to radically different contexts it will still be free in the
> dogmatic sense, but it may no longer be all that useful.

Because, unfortunately, representatives of Creative Commons have
asserted that CC-By-Sa licensed media can integrated as a whole
integrated into non-free works, producing a result which is not freely
licensed. In other words— that the cc-by-sa copyleft is nearly moot in
the context of images since they tend to be either incorporated
verbatim or subject to only trivial non-copyright deserving
modifications even when the the resulting work as a whole clearly
builds upon the illustration and isn't merely a collection of separate
things.

The license text itself appears to be reasonably explicit on this
matter— but I feel it would be unethical to use CC-By-SA when doing
so would cause me to end up litigating against people who were merely
following, in good faith, what they believe to be authoritative
advice.


GFDL licensed images are still perfectly usable in freely licensed
reference works, in spite of the inconveniences in the license. It's
unfortunate that there doesn't currently exist an "unclouded" copyleft
license which is well suited for photographs.

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Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Michael Snow<wikipedia@verizon.net> wrote:
> [snip]
>
>> I cannot fathom why you would limit media to being released only under
>> the GFDL unless it was designed specifically for incorporation into a
>> GFDL work. It's a documentation license, not a media license, and when
>> applied to radically different contexts it will still be free in the
>> dogmatic sense, but it may no longer be all that useful.
>>
> Because, unfortunately, representatives of Creative Commons have
> asserted that CC-By-Sa licensed media can integrated as a whole
> integrated into non-free works, producing a result which is not freely
> licensed. In other words— that the cc-by-sa copyleft is nearly moot in
> the context of images since they tend to be either incorporated
> verbatim or subject to only trivial non-copyright deserving
> modifications even when the the resulting work as a whole clearly
> builds upon the illustration and isn't merely a collection of separate
> things.
>
> The license text itself appears to be reasonably explicit on this
> matter— but I feel it would be unethical to use CC-By-SA when doing
> so would cause me to end up litigating against people who were merely
> following, in good faith, what they believe to be authoritative
> advice.
I don't think I'd be so quick to blame Creative Commons for this,
regardless of the advice they've given. It seems like most people
reusing copyleft materials in good faith do so without fully
understanding the concept, advice or no advice. I've seen plenty of GFDL
material combined with other works in this way as well, even when as you
say, the whole clearly builds upon the original rather than being a
collection of works that can stand independently. It's a bad practice
and a major educational challenge for free licenses, but I don't find it
that closely related to the issue of choosing a free license in the
first place.

--Michael Snow


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On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Michael Snow<wikipedia@verizon.net> wrote:
> I don't think I'd be so quick to blame Creative Commons for this,
> regardless of the advice they've given. It seems like most people
> reusing copyleft materials in good faith do so without fully
> understanding the concept, advice or no advice. I've seen plenty of GFDL
> material combined with other works in this way as well, even when as you
> say, the whole clearly builds upon the original rather than being a
> collection of works that can stand independently. It's a bad practice
> and a major educational challenge for free licenses, but I don't find it
> that closely related to the issue of choosing a free license in the
> first place.

To be full clear: I was not attempting to and would not blame Creative
Commons because other people make errors regarding licensing. As you
point out— confusion in this area is a universal truth.

The critical distinction is that when someone makes an error regarding
the application of the GFDL I can write them a polite explanation, and
even point them to the FSF blog entry commenting specifically on this
issue. I have a 100% satisfaction rate with this approach.

With CC-By-SA there exist a distinct risk that any attempt to educate
will be simply be countered by a reference to the incorrect claim that
CC-By-SA's copyleft doesn't extend past the edges of an image, leading
to a distinctly more adversarial negotiation.

Of course— many people will claim many things, and these things are
not legally binding— but I think you have to agree that the words of a
party with near unilateral power to change the licensing terms does
have a special authority.

This is a primary factor why the majority of my illustrations remain
FDL-1.2 only and also why I discontinued contributing copyrightable
works to Wikimedia while the licensing question was open. It is not
the only factor, but it's one that can be fixed.


Cheers,

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Michael Snow wrote:
> Marco Chiesa wrote:
>
>> Commons accepts materials that are free according to
>> http://freedomdefined.org/Definition GFDL works fall within that
>> definition, so they're free. We have lived eight years with GFDL and
>> we've called Wikipedia the free encyclopedia all the time, so we
>> cannot just dismiss GFDL now only because we've found a license that
>> works better for us. The interincompatibility is probably the worst
>> feature of copyleft, but we've lived long time with that and there's
>> no reason to stop doing it.
>>
>>
> In terms of our policy, I agree with this. That being said, for anyone
> deciding what license to choose when contributing to Wikimedia Commons -
> I cannot fathom why you would limit media to being released only under
> the GFDL unless it was designed specifically for incorporation into a
> GFDL work. It's a documentation license, not a media license, and when
> applied to radically different contexts it will still be free in the
> dogmatic sense, but it may no longer be all that useful.
>
>

While I completely agree with you, the situation is somewhat
different if you are downloading a work that has been previously
published under GFDL. Then the decision is not whether to
choose the GFDL license, but the decision is whether to download.

I suggest the decision should be to download.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Marco Chiesa wrote:
>>
>>> Commons accepts materials that are free according to
>>> http://freedomdefined.org/Definition GFDL works fall within that
>>> definition, so they're free. We have lived eight years with GFDL and
>>> we've called Wikipedia the free encyclopedia all the time, so we
>>> cannot just dismiss GFDL now only because we've found a license that
>>> works better for us. The interincompatibility is probably the worst
>>> feature of copyleft, but we've lived long time with that and there's
>>> no reason to stop doing it.
>>>
>> In terms of our policy, I agree with this. That being said, for anyone
>> deciding what license to choose when contributing to Wikimedia Commons -
>> I cannot fathom why you would limit media to being released only under
>> the GFDL unless it was designed specifically for incorporation into a
>> GFDL work. It's a documentation license, not a media license, and when
>> applied to radically different contexts it will still be free in the
>> dogmatic sense, but it may no longer be all that useful.
>>
> While I completely agree with you, the situation is somewhat
> different if you are downloading a work that has been previously
> published under GFDL. Then the decision is not whether to
> choose the GFDL license, but the decision is whether to download.
>
> I suggest the decision should be to download.
>
Right, that's why I focused my comments on people who are in a position
to choose the license.

--Michael Snow

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